his lust, and he was getting off. But a guy had to eat. I’d just wait until the bite marks healed before seeing Elias.
Even after he came again, I was still feeling it. Fuck, it would be nice to be able to feed and get off at the same time. Pants open, he carried me into his room. It was so fucking over the top melodramatic, I started laughing.
Literally, black silk sheets, black wall hangings, black walls—if he’d had a coffin shaped bed, it would have fit right in with the aesthetic.
“What the fuck are you laughing at?” he demanded as he dumped me on the bed.
“Aww, poor baby, did I hurt you feelings?” Okay, so I was a little drunk, pointing one of my heeled feet at him and mocking him just a little. It was no reason to rip the shoe off and snap the heel.
Those were my best pair of shoes.
“I think you have too much energy,” he growled. “You need to remember who you’re here to serve.”
Really?
I slugged him.
It broke my hand, but whatever. When he ripped the dress open though, oh it was on. The problem was that I was already lust drunk, and the more I fought, the more it fanned his lust. Fuck, I didn’t care how rough he made it. Or that he half strangled me when he mounted me. The moment his teeth sank into my throat, I was groaning. I came over and over, but more from the lust pounding into me than his body.
Then the world darkened as he wouldn’t let go, and the pain pierced the pleasure. I fought to get his teeth out of me, but all he did was moan and suck harder, his hips pistoning until the world blotted out.
Then I was choking on blood. So much blood. It was pouring down my throat until I gagged.
I didn’t want it.
Didn’t he understand…
Terror clawed at me when I woke.
Blood coated my mouth.
The room was wrecked.
My clothes shredded.
Dimitri was gone. No sign of him anywhere.
I staggered into the bathroom and stared at the red eyes staring back at me.
What the fuck had he done?
Terror turned to rage.
I was going to kill me a vampire.
He’d wrecked my favorite outfit. Broken my favorite pair of shoes. Beyond all that, he’d poured his blood down my throat.
I couldn’t be a vampire, but my noodle like limbs and weakness decried all of that.
I didn’t heal from blood.
I didn’t…
Alfred lifted his head. She’d gone utterly limp in his arms. Images kept flashing through his mind. Her confrontation with Isaac, her city’s prince. That shit stain could die. Her internment. The warden. Dimitri’s face and name were imprinted. That was another shit stain. He’d tasted her power and wanted it, that was why he’d brutalized her. Taken and taken until she’d nearly died, the last of her heartbeats so sluggish, she should have, and then he’d fed her blood.
Cupping her face, Alfred murmured, “You will have your vengeance, hellion. I give you my word.”
Then he lifted her and carried her inside. Her heart beat so slow. Almost too slow. But he had time. He had to get her right to the very brink to break the last shadow chain. His brothers had done their best, but they didn’t fully comprehend demons—or the fact that they tangled deeper than blood.
“Alfred,” Fin called him as he passed by, striding toward the stairs to his own wing.
“Not now,” he answered. Not while he had her on his tongue and in his mind. He saw every moment from her death to her awakening to her confrontations to when Maddox arrived in her cell.
The warden’s visits were particularly colorful, and he planned to remove every inch of his taint. Of course, he’d known what she was, he couldn’t have mistaken her for anything else. To control one like her would have given him enormous power.
“You drained her?” Maddox was in his way. The dragon’s eyes furious, battle-readiness etched into his every muscle. Rogue stepped between them, but he couldn’t contain the dragon’s growl. “She wasn’t ready for that.”
“Later, Maddox,” Alfred ordered him. “She’s mine now.”
His until he purged the taint, then his brothers could have at her again. The danger to them was more real than they’d realized. They’d done well to split her blood between them, to flush her with theirs. Smart.
The blood had sustained her. But the taint, no matter how minute, was still there.
Maddox lunged forward, and Rogue barely caught him. “Hold off,” Rogue told